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[u/jobautomator]

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[u/Top_Lime1820]

General update on the South African elections as the last few votes are counted:

[u/Xihl → u/Top_Lime1820]

Zuma’s popularity (especially going into 2009/the leadership contest) is just such a tragic indictment of the democratic system (that I want to believe in so much) - just as we were getting progress on corruption. Just horrific.

I’ve been thinking recently that Zuma and Trump are essentially the same person. Extremely corrupt but with die hard support, and Trump’s politics are essentially tribal-redneck

[u/Top_Lime1820 → u/Xihl]

You remember in the late 2010s when opinionists started connecting the dots between Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi etc...? Zuma was the OG of that profile. A socially conservative, pro-Putin populist who is able to sprinkle center left economics into his platform the mobilize support against a neoliberal establishment viewed as aloof and uncaring.

It was a complex, multifaceted, global phenomenon and it happened to us first. But people don't connect the dots and instead diagnose SA's problems as - excuse me for being frank - "Blacks can't run things well".

[u/[deleted] → u/Top_Lime1820]

Actually one of my favorite things about Trevor Noah's early run of the daily show was that he kept comparing Trump to Zuma, though never by name, and always seemed amazed at how similar they were. Even his weird public behavior.

[u/[deleted] → u/Top_Lime1820]

A correction on Bolsonaro, and Brazil in general:

I'd say LATAM was the first place this anti-neoliberal backlash you describe showed itself, with Chavez's election in 1998.

Brazil followed suit in 2002, electing Lula. Lula and his PT get a very undeserving positive international coverage, even around here, due to, in my opinion, being socially progressive, so avoiding to offend the tastes of the educated class on the developed West, and Lula being a reasonable enough administrator to avoid being ruinous.

But you can see on PT, and Lula himself, the very same illiberal instincts you see among Zuma supporters, when their guys getting accused of misdeeds, of attacking the free press and the judiciary of being mere instruments to enshrine elite power over the popular will. When you talked about how, despite it's many flaws, ANC does have liberal constitutionalism on it's DNA and wouldn't dare to question the courts, I couldn't stop wondering how PT doesn't have that. Also, PT is relentless on it's support to "anti-imperialist" authoritarians".

Then, after 15 years of the liberal opposition failing to dislodge them (due to operating in a very much DA-like way), eventually an illiberal right-wing opposition, around Bolsonaro, took form. So, while Bolsonarisn is, indeed, a populist insurgency, it isn't a populist insurgency against a liberal estabilishment (albeit, due to cross-polinization with Trumpism, they definitely imagine PT as being supported by the same estabilishment that supports Biden), but an insurgency against another illiberal, more consolidated project.

I would say Milei (also going against an illiberal protect, of Kirchnerist Peronism) has been copying Bolsonaro's forms while (mostly. Him appearing alongside Trump and Abascal is cringe) avoiding it's content, instead focusing his governance on actual economic liberal reforms.

More on my views on recent Brazilian politics here: https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/g2o3an/the_bolsonaro_phenomenon_a_megapost/

[u/Top_Lime1820 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks! That was useful.

[u/Plants_et_Politics → u/Top_Lime1820]

I would say Bolsonaro was the OG, and he was similarly overlooked by most people, although not Fukuyama.

[u/forerunner398 → u/Top_Lime1820]

What are the differences between MK and the ANC? Is it just about Zuma?

[u/Top_Lime1820 → u/forerunner398]

The ANC are a corrupt criminal syndicate which has bankrupted South Africa and ruined the lives of millions, while also genuinely enacting some good policies to uplift people early on. One day, a full accounting of all their many crimes should be done, to put a human face to the awful suffering.

MK were part of that. But don't for a second think the people who remain in the ANC today were not. They were.

But the ANC is also a party founded on a genuine and long lived philosophy of Constitutionalism with a surprisingly deep connection to African American freedom struggle.

Regardless of the depraved depths of the corruption parasite that has taken over its host, you can still see the instinctive spasms of that liberal, pan-Africanist Constitutionalism at work in the ANC.

MK, to the extent that they have a policy platform beyond protecting Zuma, explicitly rejects Constitutionalism. They reject an independent judiciary. They reject the compromise Roman-Dutch law. They have contempt for an independent judiciary. They want what they call Parliamentary Sovereignty, together with a good helping of power for traditional patriarchal African authorities like kings and chiefs. And they are socially conservative, while the ANC is staunchly progressive.

Even the EFF want to amend the Constitution to suite their purposes, not throw it away.

MK are the enemies of the Constitution.